"Yes. The short answer is 'yes.' But please, follow me over to our John Legend conference suite and we'll talk through the entire business."

They follow you in trailing twos, each pair's tentacles entwined and caked in a pulsating pungent mucus mass. The boys out at Monmouth suspect that this is their primary means of information exchange, shooting biopulse packets back and forth with a tittering rapidity accompanied by that everpresent chitterclick sound. Lt. Roscoe summed it up during one of the early briefings post-arrival: "You hear them before you see them; you hear them after you see them; they don't ever goddamn shut the fuck up." Poet him, with his way with words.

"Gentle...things, step right in." The alien leadership cavalcade packs the darkened room, ten, sixteen, twenty, all twenty-two of them filtering in, dispersing into the Aeron chairs. For years, those chairs bore the burden of the greathouses of the law, come now Skadden and Cravath, Debevoise and Latham, press your buttered masses into the welcoming cradle of Herman Miller. But for the past month, you, your staff and attorneys, along with the rest of V10 have been enlisted into the service of these unearthly things. "Things": gelatinous and puss-oozing across purple scale-scabbed skin, rotund and towering--thank God Renzo with his high-ceiling infatuation agreed to do the conference floor remodel--and supported on miniature legs ending in finely haired hooves; they bear more than a passing resemblance to an overstuffed eggplant left to rot behind some Hell's Kitchen dumpster or a Matryoshka doll with a nice case of necrotizing fasciitis.

"I want to thank you all for attending this litecoin presentation." As is their liking, the room remains dimmed save for the soft blush glow of the master screen at the front of the table: "Litecoin: Introduction, Risks, and Opportunities"; and at the bottom, of course: "Confidential | Draft Only | Subject to Revision." "I think you're really going to enjoy what we've prepared for you today." It's time.

A swift single motion as you draw the electrosaber blade from the concealed cutout of your dove grey Canali super 140s suitpants, custom tailored for the occasion. "Long live the Firm! God Bless the United States of America! Death to Extraterrestrial Tyranny!" You run the blade straight into the thick, folded neck of the one nearest you. Hot mess spews out on the table, its acidic composition sizzling against the white-on-greyriverrun Carrara marble. His death sound is not unlike the bleating of a lamb. "Presenting: Payback, you fat fucks!" You spring atop the table and rush across its expanse toward the leader.